02.20 Minimum Viable Product -

What is Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

It is a product with all the basic features it needs to offer but without additional bells and whistles.

The point of an MVP is to get a product out into the market and hands of consumers a.s.a.p. so that they can give feedback on what they like and what they don’t, which helps guide the company in improving the product.

An MVP is Minimal

MVP can be tracked back to lean manufacturing principles. Those original principles from Toyota were about producing a valuable product with the least amount of waste possible. It should eliminate unused parts and reduce the need for workers to carry them around.

An MVP should contain ONLY the most valuable features and, perhaps most importantly, be fully functional. It should have all the core features that communicate value, a well-designed user experience, and solid reliability.

An MVP is Viable

One of the main goals of an MVP is to deliver on what the customers have been promised. However, it is not necessary if the company wants to use this as a learning opportunity (Beta Test) to refine their product and market.

An MVP is a Product

A prototype of MVP is a way of testing if a service is viable or if an idea or web design will work for your customers, it can be in any form that form satisfies its goals of acquiring user feedback. It helps you to collect the most validated learning about customers with the least effort, activities that can guarantee customer feedback help you quickly gather information.

An MVP is a Process

It’s part of a process for determining what your target market really needs, it doesn’t have to be a physical product – it can be an email or website prototype. It is a process of testing ideas & assumptions. It’s an iterative process that involves taking calculated risks, running small experiments & implementing changes based on the results.

Related Concepts to the MVP

Prototype

It is a preliminary model of something, the early sample that is used to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from. The main goal is to reduce the risk involved in creating new products/services by allowing errors and problems to be identified and solved before too much time and money has been spent.

MLP vs MVP

MLP (minimum loveable product) is used to identify the features that are most integral to a product and are likely to generate traction. It is a more advanced version of an MVP, with additional features and consideration for what the final product should offer in totality.

MVP & Lean Startup Philosophy

The MVP is based on the lean startup methodology, which applies to both products and businesses as a whole. The lean startup concept is a business innovation strategy in which new products are developed and launched quickly with minimal resources to test if a business model or product works early on. Rather than spending time developing an elaborate plan that might turn out to be unworkable.

MMP (Minimum Marketable Product)

It is complete with the most basic features users require from the product and ready to sell, but can still be improved upon if needed.

MAP (Minimum Awesome Product)

It has to do with iterative improvement upon this design or user experience streamlining/improvement.

MMF (Minimum Marketable Feature)

It is the smallest feature that provides real value to customers that can be built into a product to test its market fit. It must answer a real need and solve a problem they have. To be marketable, the feature must be of high quality and usability.

MVB (Minimum Viable Brand)

It’s a compact, stripped-down version of a brand that still has enough value to be published. It has enough benefits and value that people will want to use it, and it’s flexible enough to improve based on user feedback.

Minimum Viable Co-Founder

It can be difficult to find someone to co-found the business with you. To find a minimum viable co-founder, certain characteristics should be considered such as reliability, commitment, likability, productivity, and reasonable, rational, and realistic views.

Minimum Viable Team

It is the smallest group of people you need to get your job done. The optimal size of an MVT depends on the type of project and what resources are available, but one common size for an MVT is 3-5 people.

Characteristics of MVP

It provides room for gauging user reception and feedback gathering for future iterative improvements – MVP is a great way to start. It allows you to create core features and then iterate on those to create something that many people will find helpful.
It has enough inherent value that even at release, people are willing to buy or use it. An MVP should give early adopters a glimpse of what the final product can become.
Startups typically have less capital, so it’s important to build MVP quickly and inexpensively so that you can get feedback from users and make changes before spending time and money to build it.
The MVP shouldn’t create too much negative impact when it is released into the market to gauge user reception.

Types of MVP

Low-Fidelity MVP

Customer problems are not always an indication that they are willing to pay for solutions. Low-fidelity MVPs help identify the customers that can be served and the nature of the problem more precisely.

High-Fidelity MVP

When you develop a low-fidelity MVP, you don’t have to invest a lot of money in developing software or infrastructure. But once you develop a high-fidelity MVP, you can detect more user wants and needs and make appropriate changes to your product.

Could Your Startup Use an MVP?

When it comes to startups, statistics show that 42% of them fail. The main reason is the absence of market need. If you want your startup to succeed, it’s best to focus on getting feedback before you go any further.

There are two ways you can build an MVP. You can pivot, or iterate on your business model as needed, or you can give up on your idea. So you don’t have to waste any more time and money.

Starting with an MVP allows a startup to avoid some of the top reasons why startups fail since you can discover if there is a market need for your product while keeping costs low and improving on your product after proving the availability of the target market.

What Type of MVP is Best for you?

The point of building an MVP is to learn. You can learn about potential customers and what products they like, you can also learn about your business and its strengths and weaknesses. When you have a basic understanding of the market you want to enter, you need to conduct market research to better understand your venture, that’s where the concierge comes in.

If you know much about the market, but don’t know if your audience will be interested in your products or services. You can use the Landing Page MVP or Pre-Order MVP. When your aim for an MVP is to know what people will think of your product when using it, you can go The Wizard of OZ or the Single-Feature MVP route.

Purpose of an MVP

To Enter the Market with a Small Budget

MVP is popular among new entrants to the market. It’s common for companies to launch a new product with a minimal budget, to test the viability of the product in different situations.

To Find the Right Audience

The MVP concept can help you reach your target audience by drawing on knowledge and time.

To Create a Balance between Offerings & Customer

An MVP helps the company owners figure out what the customers want and encourages them to strike a fine balance between offering and need. They improve the product or introduce something entirely different if it will satisfy the customer’s needs.

To Minimize Errors

The MVP helps (Mobile App & Web App) eliminate or reduce errors, minimize risks, and speed up software product development.

To Collect The Maximum Quality Feedback

Getting feedback is vital for any business. It can be hard to get positive feedback, but sometimes it can be harder to get negative feedback. Because you want to cater to a specific niche of consumers, you need to create an MVP to help target that niche and collect quality feedback from these people.

MVP Product Development Benefits

Market Validation: by creating an MVP, you can narrow your focus and determine exactly what value you will be providing to your potential customers. If you have a firm grasp of what your customers truly want, your product launch will be more efficient.
Feedback & Iterative Development: MVP is a development approach that facilitates an inexpensive way to test your business idea. It enables you to target the core functionality by testing on real customers. MVP allows you to make changes and scale up your product based on the feedback.
Testing Product Profit Generation Models: you have to experiment with multiple strategies if you want to make money with your product. Something may look good on paper, but you still need to try it out before deciding whether it works for you or not.
Helps in Attracting Investors: MVP lets you show it to the investors since they are likely to be successful so you can get the investment you want.
Cost efficiency: the low cost of an MVP is one of its major advantages.

More Focus on Building the Core

Rather than coming up with a product that has every bell and whistle feature imaginable, It is better to put out a stripped-down version. It is easier to see whether your core product concept is the right fit for your target market.

Speedy Product Development

It means designing and releasing an application a.s.a.p, making improvements quickly as feedback is gathered, and changing direction based on what is learned.

Market Validation

MVP development is aimed at testing & determining what works and what doesn’t work in the market. The goal is to understand what the market demands and to put out a product that will satisfy existing customers and attract new ones. It eliminates the chances of developing products no one wants.

Minimizing The Development Cost

When you build only the key features of an APP upfront, cases of poor user reception, schedule delays, and product budget overruns will be reduced. This way you can spend more time getting feedback from actual customers rather than spending all of your time and money on features nobody needs.

More Feedback = Improved Product

Feedback from your customers at the early development stage of a product helps shape the experience they have with that product and will foster iterative improvements.

The Need to Build an MVP

Clear Focus: MVP enables you to focus on the specific value your product can offer. It is easier for you to identify your target customers and the problems they’ve been experiencing. The approach also helps you to choose what functionality will be implemented first in your product – save your money.
Get Feedback on What Can be Improved: MVP gets you quality feedback from your target market on what features should be improved/added to make it better. Applying improvements recommended by the feedback you’ve gathered makes your product a better fit and sets it up for success.
Cost Efficiency: MVP provides only a basic set of features, developers will be able to create it more quickly than when creating a full-fledged product.
MVP Results in a Total Failure: an MVP helps you to refine and adjust your idea, to prevent a total failure. By keeping your MVP cheaper/simpler, you can use those resources to launch another idea.

Guide to Building an MVP

Start with Market Research: a good idea may have the potential to bring you profits and make your business grow. A lot of times you will find the idea is not what the customers want. This is why you need to do market research and surveys.
Ideate on Value Addition: why is your idea valuable to the target audience? what are the benefits your idea can provide? why should they buy your idea?
Map Out User Flow: when you design your product’s user flow, keep in mind who your target audience is, so that it is easy for them to use.
Prioritize MVP Features: MSCW (Must-Have/Should-Have/Could-Have/Won’t Need) features.
Launch MVP: MVP should be built with the highest degree of quality to satisfy the customers.
Exercise BLM (Build/Measure/Learn): BML is one of the most important steps in building an MVP. It deals with measuring the acceptance of your MVP through feedback and also allows you to assess whether it needs to be improved or not.

MVP Metrics

Business v.s. User Metrics

Business: analyzing business-critical metrics; Customer: analyzing the user behavioral metrics

Business-critical metrics are statistics used to evaluate a company’s performance & product. Those metrics like sales revenue, gross margin, net profit margin, monthly recurring revenue, etc tell you if your business idea is profitable.

User behavioral metrics capture how users interact with the MVP and final product. Those metrics help assess which features are important to success. It can be measured by analyzing churn rate, bounce rate, page views, load views, retention, and conversion rates.

Vanity Metrics v.s. Actionable Metrics

Vanity Metrics: the number of Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and blog subscribers you have doesn’t tell you anything about the viability of your product, but rather how well you can publicize/market it.

Actionable Metrics: they are the most effective way to measure the viability of your idea. They can be tough to look at, but you need that kind of brutal honesty if you’re going to make good decisions. Those can be conversion rate, return on marketing investment, customer lifetime value, customer acquisition costs, etc.

Key MVP Development Mistakes

Choosing the wrong problem to solve: it is important to consider the customer needs on which it will be built. Efficiency is not important if your product can not solve a problem for your customers.
Skipping the Prototyping phase: it is easy to overlook details when you are in the early stages of designing a product, and prototyping can help you avoid those oversights.
Targeting the wrong set of personas: find people who can give you honest feedback in your target market, instead of getting feedback from friends and family.
Inappropriate development method: failing to choose the appropriate MVP development methodology – Agile/Waterfall/DevOps – is one of the main reasons for the failure.

Tips to Target the Right Market While Building an MVP

Analyze the Competition: you have to do a lot of work to understand the market & competitors. You have to make sure that whatever idea you have fills an existing and unmet need. Even if your product is unique, it will still be competing with other products in the same industry.
Geographically Segment the Customer Base: by doing so, the company will be able to familiarize itself with the location-based attributes that define its ideal target market. Considering the following factors: impact of the climate/common language/cultural factors/local retailers role/encouragement.
Find the motivation behind a purchase: by understanding customer’s needs, you can create a product that speaks to them in a way that resonates, which helps to move the business forward.

Tools to Build MVP

Airtable, WebFlow, Figma, Google Docs, Google Forms, Framer.

MVP Implementation Steps

Define your product: figure out what problem you will product will solve.
Prepare product requirements: list the features before designing, it will help you understand your product better.
Identify priority product requirements (PPR): the task of identifying which features are essential for the MVP is crucial and can be confusing. Those features with the highest priority make up the Priority Product Requirements (PPR).
Find PPR dependency with other requirements: it’s helpful to identify high-priority features that are dependent on other features so that development can be streamlined, while also making future improvements can be made easily.
Launch the product: make sure the product is launched with the features that matter most.
Get feedback and implement changes: make sure you get feedback from your customers, and change the product as needed to meet their needs and wants. This is a process that you can use with every MVP unless there is no market for the product.

How to Validate Your MVP Product?

You must test the product to establish whether it meets users’ needs. It is not enough to just build an MVP, you must have an effective process for putting your MVP through its paces and making sure it delivers on key quality standards.

Crowdfunding: It is a great way to test whether your product is viable in the market and to raise money. You can get a market valuation for your idea.
Pre-order Pages: you can pre-sell your product to your potential customer base by getting them involved in the early stages of product design. If people like it, you can move on.
Customer Interviews: ask your target customers what they think about the product (feedback) and whether there are any improvements or new features that would make it better.
Piecemeal MVPs: They present an excellent way to validate your business by spending little money on a product and using existing platforms, services, and tools to introduce it to the target audience.
Landing Pages: it can be used to explain the features of your product is a great way to test. Tracking visitors’ actions & behavior can tell you whether they’re interested in what you’re offering. Analyzing data about visitors with tools like Hotjar/GG Analytics will give you valuable insight.
Explainer Videos: having a story-driven video that illustrates how your product/service solves a problem helps you increase sign-up rates.
Ad Campaigns: by running ad campaigns before you launch the product, you can generate user engagement and collect data about how many people are clicking on your ads and which ad copy converts best.
Social Media Surveys: use the SNS surveys to get a quick and better idea of how prospective customers feel about your products.
A/B Testing: It is a great way to see which version of a newsletter/email campaign/landing page/App, or blog works best. You can use HubSpot/Google Analytics to gather data about your customer’s behavior and insights that can help you make improvements over time.
New Signups: getting people to sign up for your product comes from reaching out to the right audience with a quality MVP. Your product validation increases as more people sign up for it.

How to Conduct a User Interview for Your MVP

Before The Interview:

Set an Interview Goal: you need to focus your questions on ONE or Several needs. To understand why users USE/ABANDON your services.
Find Users to Interview: first, you need to identify the users who will best suit your purposes. second, it’s important to keep track of the characteristics of your interviewees so you can use them to select your participants later on in the project.
Design Questions & Interview Workflow: Greetings — Problem Qualification — Describe Your Solution Compellingly — Solution Exploration & Demo — Closing
Perform a Mock Test Interview: to get a better idea of how your prospective employer will respond to your questions. Try out different types of questions and refine the script until you feel comfortable with it.

During the Interview

Build Rapport with Interviewees: keeping the participants comfortable will help them feel more confident, which will make for better interviews.
Clarify Problem Qualification: the discussion should aim to gain an understanding of the problem. Make sure everyone understands what the problem is and who has it. Everyone must agree on one problem so that you can show them a solution.
Tell a Compelling Story: if you have a presentation or visual aid to help explain your pitch, this is a good place to use it.
Explore Solution & Demo: ask your customers to describe their pain points, and listen carefully to the words they use. If a feature hasn’t been implemented, consider how you can incorporate this information into your product.
Close the Interview: give your respondents a sense of closure, do this by telling them that you appreciate their name and feedback.

After the Interview

Structure the Information: develop insights into what new products/features may interest people, how they might use those products/features in their daily lives, and how you could design/develop those features in ways that better meet their needs.
Conduct a Retrospective: assess from the interviews what you’ve learned, revise the screening criteria to see how the new info fits with it, and measure & analyze the new info to improve your MVP into a full-fledged product, repeat the process with more interviews to make sure you can do the further improvements.

Ways to Test An MVP

Experimental Testing: testing an idea with an experimental MVP can help you decide whether to pursue your idea further, it also helps you understand what your target audience thinks of your concept.
Manual-First MVPs: it is an efficient MVP testing technique in which we provide the product or service manually instead of using the software. The best thing about manual MVPs is that they help you run initial experiments and tests to see whether your MVP is working or not.
Concierge MVPs: this approach is best used to test whether users like what you’re offering or not, and see if they’d pay for that service or product. It lets you quickly find out whether a product resonates with customers before you invest time & money in building a full version.
Digital Prototyping: This allows you to show potential customers how your product will function in real-life conditions, and they will help you get feedback before you start developing the actual product.
Paper Prototyping: it is easy to use, and you can get started quickly. It can help you save time and money when creating your first version of a product. It allows for collaboration, as well as the exploration of many ideas without having to spend a lot of money.
Single-feature MVPs: it is always better to focus on one feature to try and develop multiple features at once. It not only reduces time consumption but also to pinpoint your target audience more easily.
Hallway Testing: This means approaching random people walking down the hallway and asking them to test your product. Take note of everything: their confusion, problems, and the amount of time they spend trying to complete an objective on it.

How Much Does an MVP Cost?

Initial Budget to Build an MVP: you can hire product development companies or freelancers, or manage the development in-house, choose whatever approach suits you best.
Time Required to Build an MVP: usually it takes more than 2 weeks, the first iteration contains the most basic features, including ecosystem map, empathy map, prioritized backlog, user journey map, and stakeholder map. You can expect to pay $15-$75/hour, depending on the complicacy.
Cost of Design: it depends on the user interface & experience, a seamless user experience relies on a simple/easily understandable interface & navigation, all these have a part in determining the cost.
The Number of Features & Complexity: complexity and priority are the two factors that affect the cost, there is no silver bullet to creating a priority list of features, you can use the Blue Ocean Strategy and MoSCow Method.
Technology Stack: the exact technology stack that you choose for the MVP depends heavily upon project quality.

How to Reduce Costs of Building an MVP

Prioritize and Start with Key Features: come up with a list of requirements for each stage of the user journey, prioritize all the requirements, and form a product hypothesis.
Choose Cross-Platform Development: it only needs one codebase, Flutter is an example of a framework that allows you to build a single codebase that can run on different platforms faster than with native solutions.
Adopt a Suitable Project Management Approach: some commonly used approaches, like Agile (an iterative approach that includes several smaller cycles) and Waterfall (longer and expensive).
Use Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment: to reduce development costs and time, it’s important to structure your work in a way that enables programmers to automatically build, deploy, and test your app.
Start Testing Early: testing in the early stage helps you avoid a glitchy product on the market.
Choose a Partner with a Trusted IT Service Provider: it’s always best to partner with a reliable contractor when you want to address your business needs.

Measuring MVP’s Success

Communication: use different forums and talk to visitors, have them evaluate your product, and share their opinions. It helps you identify problems that you may not have noticed before.
User Engagement: it helps you understand how relevant your product is to potential customers. It also helps you determine your product’s potential and detect issues like UX problems.
Percentage of Paying Users: find out who is willing to pay and what features they’re looking for.
The number of Downloads: for the App, the number of downloads is a key metric. The more downloads, the more popularity.
Percentage of Active Users: check out the number of active users, and think about how you can get more customers to be active.
Customer Lifetime: to learn how long users keep your software on their device, monitor the customer lifetime metric. If it is too short, look at other metrics to identify and fix the reason.

Key Metrics to Measure the MVP Success

Feedback: it should be a priority throughout the entire product development life cycle, especially useful in the MVP phase.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): it is a survey-based metric for measuring customer satisfaction. Ask your customers to rate their experience of your APP from 0 to 10.
Activations: It is a measure of how well your product performs among new users.
Active Users: think about which metrics best describe your project.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): see how much money it takes to get a single customer.
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue): it is the core financial metric for SaaS products, it shows how much money your product makes per month and includes direct income as well as all money-related activities except one-off payments.
ARPU (Average Revenue Per User): it is a metric used to gauge a company’s growth performance. It helps determine how many potential users will generate revenue.

Steps to Move From MVP to Full-Scale Product

Collect Feedback: figure out how accurate your assumptions are by gathering user feedback, it will help you understand what assumptions about your product. As you make adjustments, your product will get better at meeting user expectations.
Prepare to Scale: after launch, it needs to be prepared for an increase in new users.
Get The Price Right: try different ways of making money from your App, by introducing new premium features to displaying ads. You can adapt your monetization strategy according to your findings.
Market Your Product: successful marketing campaigns seek to gain interest among potential customers by offering a limited number of features, so you can get feedback and add new features in subsequent versions of the product.
Analyze and Test: you may have to add more features after the launch, after each improvement, tests are still needed to validate before being pushed out to your users.

How to Build MVP Apps?

Understand the Market Requirements: it is important to understand the real problem your customers are facing. Your goal is to build the application with core features that solve the identified problem. It’s best to identify what the market needs and what your competitors are offering, so you can figure out how to improve upon those features. Consider success criteria & long-term goals.
User Journey: your goal is to find out what the user’s needs and goals are for the first iteration of your app. Doing this will make it easier to create an App and marketing plan that is in line with your intended audience.
Research and Planning: determining what features will add value and solve your audience’s problem is key to finding a product-market fit. Estimate the potential of your app, and note the features you can add in future releases.
Features of the Mobile App: you can draw up a product roadmap to help you set up your MVP’s features. You need to prioritize the features you want and focus on the ones that are important for your users first.
Design/Develop/Launch MVP: this phase includes building the essential functionality that makes up the first version of an MVP. The goal is to create a simple product that can be tested for practicality and usefulness. It’s easier for developers to use MVP for continuous testing and improvement.
MVP Value Addition: the aim of MVP is to create value. It’s important to outline who the target audience is and build the product around that audience’s needs.

Conclusion

Adopting an MVP approach can greatly increase the chances of long-term success for your startup. It allows you to focus on making your app better and collecting client feedback before even launching your main product. The product development process is easier by using the MVP model. Don’t forget that an MVP is built to iteratively improve over time.

If your MVP isn’t successful, you can either alter your offering or just drop the idea. It puts you in a better position in case of failure instead of building a complete app that fails, leaving you with no capital for another venture.

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